...and what a time it was, it was...a time of innocence, a time of confidences...

shit man, it's been yet another long long hiatus hernia. I was full o' intent to keep going wi' the regular postage and of course it didn't quite pan oot that way. I just minded that a coupla months ago I wrote a fair bit of a post that I ended up not using. On 'measured' reflection I'm not sure it quite cut the m-m-mustard. I still feel wrong saying that kinda thing. It seems like I'm saying that I have a 'standard' I wish to maintain. I really hope that you dig that just ain't the case. It was more that the aforementioned stuff went on and on and didn't say very much you hadn't heard before or that I hadn't said before either. That I keep coming across these kinda feelings is more or less the main reason for the lack o' regular postings...maybe. I've been trying to keep ploughing through the thickest web of despair and nonsense in the book too ie SVQ level 3- Health and Social Care (Adults). I still have nae idee (That was a typo but I'm going to keep it like that. I used to know a Dutch guy who said 'idee' instead of 'idea'. I liked both him and his penchant for inadvertently slipping back into his mother tongue a great deal. So, this one's for you, Bernie..no that he was called Bernie but you get the drift...) re what I'm doing nor do I have any notion of how it 'proves' I'm a good support worker. It might prove that I can tow a party line of sorts but why anyone should 'need' that to be proven I am clueless dear reader. Work work work has taken over a bit too. There has been a large development re TLK...I'm no sure if I want to allow masel to make as 'undeniable' a mention of her as I'm going to but it does tie in wi' the context o' the work situ. Well she's left the work...I want to tell you about every aspect of it. Let you know the way I felt when I knew I wouldn't walk in and see her there again. As I've said before that was often the only reason I had for going into the place at all. I know it's best that I don't tell you any details. I suppose I should admit at this point that the self imposed ban from writing about her has contributed to a hefty hefty degree in me not updating the blog. She was in my head all the time. I only wanted to write about her. I didn't see the point in telling you about anything else. Acht, I think I know the situ's possibly changed a bit now. Time and reflection and a' that have done the business...well sometimes. I should probably let you know that I just excised a coupla lines. Fuck man, I can't explain it. The way I feel every time I try to sum up ma feelings about her or 'situations arising'. Anyway, she's gone frae the work. We're getting on pretty well at the moment. I saw her the other day. All I'll say is that I continue to feel totally giddy when I see her. I don't think that'll ever really change. Aye in the style I'm now accustomed to from them, the org I work for have not replaced her or KS who's now on maternity leave. We're now 3 staff short. The staff team consists of me. For that I continue to be remunerated to the tune of £1034 per month. My job is a significantly different one to what it was. There is more chance of me winning the lottery-twice- than getting paid overtime. I work way over my 35 hours but I can't even claim it as TOIL because the boss is obsessed with TOIL being 'at the discretion of management' and questions EVERY TIME I have to stay late to write notes or cover support cause there's no staff. She's even went on about 'work time directives' and pish like that when I've mentioned paid overtime before going on to give a relief worker as many hours as she wants. I'm worn out by it. There is so much other shit going down that's plainly unfair...shit I sound like Student Grant there..but man, if you only kent the half o' it...I'm still looking for other jobs but I get so deflated by the thought of writing application forms and having to reflect on ma past and ma deficiencies that I usually chuck the form in the bin after a while. I keep thinking that I now owe the org something seeing as I'm progressing with the infernal SVQ and that it would 'fuck shit up' if I put ma notice in. Money is everything to this lot and they have stuff put in place to charge you if you leave having either just passed or not finished yer SVQ. I don't want to work for these characters any more. I just can't afford to fire ma notice in and fuck off 'til I find something else. It is almost untenable to keep working for them on these wages. Of course they don't know that I'm now bankrupt! It is good to feel I'm living inside ma means but I'm not sure I can do it on this amount of cash. I'm now approachin' AWBODY for £. I'm skint a week after I get paid. I'm juggling ma direct debits and getting charged by the bank. Man, I'm so rooked. I've been getting the odd offer of a shift from an agency but I've not being able to do any of them yet. I have to say that the thought of goin' back to the bum wiping type stuff I did before is no that crash hot. A lot of the shifts I did in the past were sleepovers too. They just fucked wi' ma head. I couldnae handle them. Being on yer ain for 24 hours wi' 4 highly challenging clients in the full darkness o' the Fife badlands wasnae really ma vibe. I think I was insane when I worked at that place too! That wasn't overly helpful...anyway...man, I don't think I want to work in care any longer. Anyone know a supermarket job that pays more than a fiver an hour???...One thing I should mention is the fact that I had a shave today. This seriously affects ma mood. I hate the way I look. This is increased a thousand fold when I'm clean shaven. I think I will grow a full on mofo beard ASAP. I'm thinking Daniel Kitson or David Bazan or even Josh T Pearson. Of course I bet they don't have crippling probs wi' facial dandruff!!! It's true. Any growth I have produces terrible lint which cannot be stopped by anti-dandruff shampoo or moisturiser or ANYTHING. It's fucking shit. I don't have dandruff on ma heid, I never have. Yet another o' thae 'wee jokes' which paint me out to be 'a crumpled sexless man'. But given I've currently got no hair of any kind to cover the horror, I'm working up a sweat to avoid the mirrors in the s/h. Right, here goes, simply speaking, I despise the way I look. My shorn face has something of the financial services drone about it...non-descript, unconditioned, unloveable, blank, chubby, fat, fat fat, there just ain't no funkiness in there, no character at all- it's not scuffed enough to be interesting, it's not 'anything' enough to attract you. My face has not even a semblance of adulthood or at least of a sense that I've arrived there. There is nothing much of the desirably 'real' world about it. You see fumblings and failure and misformed attempts to sculpt it...but there is none of the elegant scuffing that I love so much in others. Ma faither has loads o' these burst bloodvessaly things on his skin, primarily through grog. When I was grogging and fat I started to have them too. Now the grog and bloat period is over they've promptly gone! The only things that showed I was human have fucked off. All you get when you hae a deek is something between Harold Bishop and John 'he wuz robbed by an infarction' Smith. Maybe looking at my face tells me why I hate Duncan Fletcher so much. There's no youth, no joy, no Vernon Kay. Ma mother says I have 'dimples'. Of course, that's been a source of constant consolation to me over the years. I'm oh so clearly not a 'shagger', a 'joiner inner', a 'nubile', a 'desirable'. I know that 'you' see a 'beast' or a 'loner', a 'weird man' , a 'radgie' or a 'gadgie', somebody who could never understand yer 'dress up as an indie' world or yer 'Francois Kevorkian' remixes or yer 'love' and 'happiness' or yer 'pulling power'...but oh for the wonder and possibilities of facial hair...obscuring with a' thae minor league possibilities...I can pretend to be a Mark Eitzel or even a Steve McQueen circa that time he went 'crazy in the 70's'. If only I was able to wear dark coloured clothing at the same time then it would be ok. If you offered me a face transplant man, I would take it. I can't stand looking at this motherfucker any mair. It's failed in all the jobs that faces are supposed to do. It doesn't instil trust, desire, calm etc and it certainly doesn't make you want to stay looking at it for any period of time. I HATE THIS FUCKING FACE...and as for the internals that gan wi' it...well.. One o' the guid vibes o' the moment comes from ma current weight loss. The last time I weighed masel I was 14st 10 lb's. When I started dieting I weighed about 20 and a half stane. To get under 15 stone was something of a holy grail for me. I've now lost 5 and a half stone in about 4 and a half months o' dieting but I still feel lumpy. My body has nae 'definition'. I'm too fuckin' lazy to 'sculpt' it. I know I have lost all the weight. My gut is not there any more..but large bits at the sides still are. All the 'negative body pish' IS STILL THERE. There's no satisfaction to be had...ever!!!...fuck me... Not sure I can get much lighter in weight than this. I know I've put in a load o' effort. Until yesterday's 'treat' at celebration o' the breaking of the 15 barrier I didn't 'cheat' at all. No chips/crisps/chocolate/ and hardly any cheese since March. Definately no grog either. I did get a bit carried away at times. I'm pretty sure I know how easy it is to develop an eating disorder. That sounds so glib but I can genuinely recall a desire to make masel sick after I'd binged and feeling 'scared' to eat a proper meal. I think I probably ate around 5-700 calories a day at times. The recommended intake for a male is 2,500 I believe. I didn't take anything that had more than 3-4% fat in it. I was pretty fascist about it. I'm not sure what I need to do to get a shape that I like tho'. I think in all honesty, bearing in mind the 'image' thing I have, I won't ever find it unless wee gingery lasses suddenly start to dig my bell shaped stomach and lack of physical fitness. I have to look on this as purely a health thing. I weighed round about 20 stone for 18 months or so. That ain't guid. It's just better to be at this kinda weight. I know now that psychologically, seeing as I've broken the big barrier and reached one of ma targets it'll be hard to keep going. I've found it really hard today I can assure you. Been off the work. I took some days off for ma dad's 70th and his bash the morn. Been bored, skint. Feeling rather shit. Thinking o' the life goin' on 'oot there' and of course HER etc etc etc. This makes me want to eat lots of stodgy food. Not done too bad, I suppose. I admitted defeat a wee bit and allowed masel a bit more of the 'not too bad' stuff than I normally would. Nae big gorges. I want to keep at this weight if I can. Sometimes tho' I still feel like 'they' see me as a fat person and that hurts. I think that might just be mair o' ma ain insanity. I'm so used to the bastard now, it's hard to tell...I mentioned faither's bash there. Aye, it's in Auchtertool tomorrow night! A kickin' Saturday night indeed. For those of you who don't know where/what Auchtertool is, it's a wee hamlet somewhere between Kirkcaldy and Cowdengelly. A developed country this ain't. It's famous for having a large granny farm and a hostelry called the Kiwi Tavern. It shows the type o' family we are that we should choose to come to sic a shithole. Faither has 'simple' tastes and he'll be in his element here. I think I've spoken before re a lack of 'connection' I feel I have wi' the family. It's never far away when I'm at family bashes. My dad is a man who I've gotten used to only in the last 5 years or so. He was prone to 'doing his own thing' when I was younger and so we maybe didn't build up any great 'rapport'. I'm not sure we have that now but I have a bit of an understanding of him, I reckon. I can dig his obvious feelings of not fitting in wi' conventions or norms from outside his ain class. At least it's something we can share! I also like his quirks and peculiarities. His way of invariably pronouncing things in Fife-ese and his penchant for phrases along the lines of " You dinnae want to drink too much o' that stuff son, It'll make yer baws drop off" (he said this when he saw me drinking fresh orange juice. He thinks vodka's a far more wholesome drink) and the like. He also seems to care about me. An inkling of that wasn't always too forthcoming from him but he makes an effort now. Maybe a total understanding of our individual ways of doing isn't possible but a bit o' godamned 'respect' (this is all getting a wee bit too (Roddy) Manley for me. Next I'll be telling you about familial pissing contests and the efforts I went to to catch Apocolypse Now 'on the big screen') just might be...maybe maybe...I was going to drone on about mother. That would be too exhausting at this time! We have indeed got all the time in the world. I'll mention one more thing re family bashes...the matter of being the perennial singleton. This is another factor which points me out as a child/man misfit type. I go along there with bulging gut/nae hair/nae winning personality looking nervous and dressed 'wrong'. At the moment all ma claes are too big and I can't afford to buy decent ones that fit. The only jacket I have just destroys ma mood whenever I wear it. I feel as if I'm embracing normality and dowdiness when putting it on. It is also still way too big. I want to wear claes that are scuffed and imperfect.I don't want to look like a churchgoer or a (clothed- ha) civil servant even if the rest of ma frame and face might match. Fucking 'poverty'. The rest of you have access to credit! At least you can give the illusion of having a few bob. Credit is a wonderful thing, it really is! It means you don't have to endure some of thae litanies of pain straight from the Desmond Morris collection...read into that what you will...anyway, folk of ma age are no 'meant' to be single, let's face it. It means I'm 'weird' quite frankly. That of course is the case but...fuck it man. I don't want to be alone. Even if I've had it this way for 35 years. I don't want it any longer. I get very distracted by thoughts of the horrors I've seen going aboot wi' their 'berds' and their other halfs and a' that. I can't help thinking " what do they have that I don't?" I'm as fucking basic as that. I just seem totally immune to 'attracting' people. Maybe the answers in the fact I look at it in that way but after years and years I can't imagine a situ where 'it' would happen. You 'all' think of me as unfunky and out of tune. How do I get round that thinking?? ie MY thinking. I despise the fact that society does look at you strangely if you're on yer ain. I just wish I felt comfy being that way. I really don't. I waste time when I'm on ma ain. I can't get started. Going out places just isn't the same either cause you've naebody to share yer experiences/ feelings wi'. I'm sitting about prior to goin to the family bash and that's what I'm thinking about. How will I look? How do I look? Why do I look this way? What caused me to come across like this? How does so much get lost in translation?! (yeah, I have so much depth inside here and you just don't see it man...fuck sorry...)...I think you get the idea. Let's move on... Aye thanks to CH, I've been going to a few fringey things. I really do love being in a pliss where 'things' seem to be going on and happening. Even if being in a massive group of middle class folk causes me 'difficulties' I want to be around people godamnit. I know I have 'solitary' tendencies! I feel these have come out of a reaction to ma situ (!!...it gets worse) rather than any innate hatred of human beings (with certain exceptions at various times!!!). Ma probs come when I think of people as 'types' ie 'the middle classes', 'the funky ones', 'the indie kids' 'the Le Tigre fans' ( the most intimidating sub-species in the world. Have you ever met an LT fan who wasn't 'stylish' ???) 'intellectuals' 'church going muthafuckers' etc. The problem is that people revert to type so easily!! We all do it..masel included. Schtick and familiarity is clawing at us all the time bellowing away re how we should shroud ourselves in something to 'fit in', to 'get on'. Fuckin' hell man, this shit fucking drags me down...anyway, man, I want to be around folk. I don't want to be in the margins. I want to be where the red eye will break my back in 2 (thanks to Sooyoung for 'allowing' me to paraphrase). Frae that pov the fringe is unsurpassable. The prole-y quotient at things I've been to with one gang of scum-y exception I'll mention below consisted of me and CH. At the wonderful DK show I'll talk about, we were sitting sandwiched between 'the chattering classes', no more no less. This lass moved into the row behind us and it turned oot she knew the dude sitting next to me. They began what was possibly the least 'destinctive' or individual conversation I think I've ever heard. The way it was intoned loudly into my left ear was a bit much. Honestly man, these people had lives ..or ok presented it that way..like you read about and that you're meant to have. She had come up for the fest from an affluent part of the south...no, silly not on her own, of course she had a man... If he wasn't called Jonathan I would be absolutely shocked..she was staying in Morningside...she had just finished work at 'the theatre', it was going well..she had been to see the festival 'hot tickets' ir the 'Talk Radio' thing...she was of course called Anna...or was it Imogen?...naturally she had a voice pitched between Moss and Winslet... and their lives were all about doing things, flying here and there, meeing her and him. When the boy chipped in he sounded like Toby Stephens and it was going well for him too...what got to me the most was how flat their conversation was. They sounded warm initially and they clearly did ken each other well but it was ALL small talk. No deviations from 'the way one talks in polite society' or from the paths that 'one' naturally follows ie advancement, self expression, holidays, weddings, christenings. I'm struggling to sum what it 'meant' to me. I think it was just shocking to keep hearing how the other half maybe are. Their lives are as far removed frae mine as could be in a society like ours. They seemed to be made of cardboard and have lives that were only written post Cold Feet or This Life. There were no tones of voice present outside the ordinary, no signs of failure, no admittance of defeat or anything that made them human godamnit. For all their exaggerated warmth they were machines, man. They were grinding ever onward until they were all technical directors of the Almeida Theatre. Part of me wants this 'fulfilled' life. This 'easy' life. I just don't want to sit on the fringes-ha! and hear it battered into me how poorly equipped I am to 'get ahead'...no really...moving on again...I'll tell you aboot a coupla things I went to see the other week. I sent an email to AM and I'll let you read some of it. There will be explanatory notes afterwards...
ma fringey stuff's been pretty good so far. Faves were Reginald D. (he was great pure and simple!- brutally honest,suave, warm, awhong really...) and Wil Hodgson (I couldn't stop thinking of Bonzo when I saw him...the stories, (almost) the look, the outlook...magic stuff). Bit of contrast there, I reckon. Saw a Welsh guy called Mark Watson who was pretty good too in a nicely surreal (lower case) stylee. Stanhope?...mmm...he produced a lot o' 'thae emotions' in me. The crowd were just horrid...tables crammed with pissed up geezers bellowing along to any mentions of euphemisms for genitalia and they kept REQUESTING JOKES!!!!!> (what the f***?? now that's a breach of comedian etiquette..in my view. I couldn't get the image oot ma head of millions of students in the early 90's filling the arenas of the land to shout for more gags about the singer of Ride from thae smug Mary Whitehoose mofos in their headset mic things). There were folk there wearing his t-shirts!!! He's clearly a very bright man and he has a delivery and range o' 'words'(!) that you just don't hear too often. He also did a couple of very nasty gags which were lapped up by the f***wits. He had a lot to say about many o' the 'big' things but I didn't trust him! I think he knows what he's doing. Because o' ma lack o' cash/stereo/magazine reading I hadnae realised that he had a 'following' and was a man of the moment. I just hate being part of 'something' and having that feeling that I'm watching somebody you're 'supposed' to like or who is the best/ the most extreme/ the hippest etc etc. Shit man, I was part of an industry! It put me off big big time. I've seen that erudite yet bellicose everyman thing done a good few times before and he IS the best at it but to most folk it might have been Chubby Brown they were watching. I'll say it again. He knows what he's doin'. He went on about his audience being lonely losers playing wi' themselves etc etc. The guys in this crowd weren't losers. They were (in the US vernacular) jocks. Some of them even had girlfriends. In fact I would gather most of them 'score' on a regular basis. That just felt wrong to me!..shit.. From what I could gather the best laughs were reserved for gags about urethras etc... I didnae have a good time...hell...went to see Daniel Kitson's play thing at The Traverse last night tho'..that was great...ah..melancholy...it's a real addiction, man... That probably sums it up, I reckon. Bonzo is a guy frae Leven who I like a great deal. He's a natural raconteur and is one o' thae guys who seems to have talent in most areas...artistic, writing, the whole shebang. I wish more of you knew about him. I'm sure you know who Doug Stanhope is. Not sure I need to say much mair. Well I suppose it's getting to yon time. Before I head I'll quote again frae the AM email... talking about the blog, did you see the comment that somebody had put up on there? I was a bit suspicious that it could have been mucky spam of some kind. It seems to be a genuine if uber patronising comment but it seems that the gist of the blog is aboot this guy and his sexual conquests wi' Thai women. I skimmed it and didnae see any mucky stuff just lots of 'interweb crap' but apparently there are a number o' 'photaes' on there ...great...the land o' the interweb... aye I mean it's great to get comments and that but they're maybe no that welcome from all sources shall we say. I hope that nobody saw the link on here and went to his blog on a works PC. That really does worry me. I thought about it and I tried to remove the comment but I can't remember how to do it. I got rid of a comment once before but it's currently beyond me. I thnk I'll treat this as 'mucky spam' and eject it when I can. I'm no trying to be a moral etc etc but come on man, the fucking irony of flogging yer male fantasy pish on a blog like this is pretty thick! I'll get rid of it when I can but please mind not to link to it unless you want to see flesh and a highly questionable writing style- ha!...well that's probably about it for now. I'll try to write some stuff soon. What I might do is tidy up some old bits and pieces that I never used and let you see them. So hopefully I'll put something up soon. Suppose I'd better end in the time honoured vibe...how do I feel at the moment?...you know what man, I really dinnae ken...there are loads o' good and loads o' bad and the old shit is still in ma heid...it's 12 gold bars all over again...